Of course, that New Orleans is close and is one of my favorite cities ever makes my impotent feelings of grief and rage even worse. I keep remembering and wondering….are the places that I loved so much under water now?

Lots of bloggers are writing about Katrina today, and I wanted to point out some links that particularly spoke to me. Hugo Schwyzer wonders if watching the news coverage of Katrina is like rubbernecking at a traffic accident. He particuarly

So, Hugo, do you think that Katrina could be a test case for your orthodox/progressive alliance theory?

Peace of Christ,
Chip

In a preindustrial age, five or six kidnappings, or plane crashes, or murders a year would have been genuinely worrisome–because they would all have happened to people you know. Now, disasters get spread internationally; you know in your head that you’re more likely to die of suicide than murder (statistically), that planes are safer than cars (statistically). But because we turn on the TV and hear about plane crashes and murders, they become processed as things that happen often.

And most of us saw the towers come down 20, 40, 100 times on 9/11.

I do worry about the kinds of effects that has on us.

I think you’re 100% right. Actually it even goes back further then the Iraq war. Right back to the 70s when the US should have started planning to use alternative fuels, as NOBODY can convince me that we would have become so involved in the affairs of the Middle East to begin with, if it weren’t for our addiction to their oil.

It’s all connected.

Most of Africa, parts of South America, even the Carribean are in far worse shape then much of the Middle East. YET we rarely get actively involved in policing them or trying to bring REAL democracy or prosperity to them.

More importantly the American people must blame ourselves for electing such a bunch of short-sighted leaders that can never DO anything to address the issues UNTIL something like this forces them to act.

Our national guard should be HOME. We should have had enough funding so that the corp of engineers was on top of the dyke situation, even ahead of it with innovative solutions. Look what the Netherlands has done with their system of sea walls and dykes. AND they have far fewer resources then we do, but are not everywhere trying to be the world policemen to protect western access to other people’s resources. That’s the difference.

They aren’t still using sandbags for dykes either. I was watching on National Geographic the other day that they have a computerized system of walls that automatically closed and blocks the sea BEFORE a sea surge hits the shore. Not waiting until afterwards and then rushing to throw sandbags on it.

New Orleans should have had that system too and maybe we could afford it if we’d quit getting involved in these global wars all the time. That’s a very historic city. I think the oldest cathedral in the Northern hemisphere is located there. We couldn’t afford to protect that city, but we can always afford another piece of military hardware.

Let’s cut back on the war business and we could afford to do other things. Heck I didn’t even have time to celebrate the end of the Cold War. I think when the Berlin Wall finally fell, we were heading out to Kuwait…That stuff needs to end.

So this woman is right.

It’s probably too soon to talk about how social and political considerations shaped this disaster. But I think that’s a perfectly reasonable discussion to have.